Surge Success Causes Democrats to Recalibrate Iraq Strategy

If you've been wondering lately why defeatist media outlets like the New York Times have suddenly been bullish on Iraq, here's the payoff: Democrats have begun to shift their political strategy in light of the success of the surge. While I have to give the Washington Post credit for reporting on the Democrats' failure to spin reality into defeat, I have to note that the following article came on page A4 of today's edition:

Democratic leaders in Congress had planned to use August recess to raise the heat on Republicans to break with President Bush on the Iraq war. Instead, Democrats have been forced to recalibrate their own message in the face of recent positive signs on the security front, increasingly focusing their criticisms on what those military gains have not achieved: reconciliation among Iraq's diverse political factions.

And now the Democrats, along with wavering Republicans, will face an advertising blitz from Bush supporters determined to remain on offense. A new pressure group, Freedom's Watch, will unveil a month-long, $15 million television, radio and grass-roots campaign today designed to shore up support for Bush's policies before the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, lays out a White House assessment of the war's progress. The first installment of Petraeus's testimony is scheduled to be delivered before the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees on the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a fact both the administration and congressional Democrats say is simply a scheduling coincidence.

The leading Democratic candidates for the White House have fallen into line with the campaign to praise military progress while excoriating Iraqi leaders for their unwillingness to reach political accommodations that could end the sectarian warfare.

"We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Anbar province, it's working," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Monday.

"My assessment is that if we put an additional 30,000 of our troops into Baghdad, that's going to quell some of the violence in the short term," Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) echoed in a conference call with reporters Tuesday. "I don't think there's any doubt that as long as U.S. troops are present that they are going to be doing outstanding work."

Advisers to both said theirs were political as well as substantive statements, part of a broader Democratic effort to frame Petraeus's report before it is released next month by preemptively acknowledging some military success in the region. Aides to several Senate Democrats said they expect that to be a recurring theme in the coming weeks, as lawmakers return to hear Petraeus's testimony and to possibly take up a defense authorization bill and related amendments on the war.

Top Five

1. After some rumors that Nicolas Sarkozy might be appointing the same type of people that got France into its current mess, some encouraging news: the new president has appointed a "socialist mugged by reality" to be his foreign minister.
   
   
2. Democrats in the Senate failed to pass another Iraq war cutoff bill with many of their own party voting against it, further signaling what I said earlier that withdrawing from Iraq. If Republicans stick to their principles, they have the upper hand on this issue.
   
   
3. Roommates.com was found guilty of violating the Fair Housing Act by providing means for users to manually choose to exclude potential roommates depending upon categories such as race, sex, and sexual orientation. This was a Ninth Circuit ruling, however. Nathan Goldman thinks the ruling has big implications. Eugene Volokh does not. Expect appeal in any case.
   
   
4. Google is in the news today, successfully defending itself against a lawsuit filed by porn publisher Perfect 10 over the use of small thumbnails used on Google's Image Search function. The case is a victory for fair use and should be hailed. Here's hoping that SCOTUS upholds it.
   
   
5. The Senate has worked out an amnesty bill for illegal immigrants. I wonder to what degree the conservative movement will accept it?
   

Top Five

1. Richard Perle attacks Bush admin for losing its way on Iraq:
   
   "'The president's failure to get his own way stems from his general inexperience in foreign affairs and his ignorance of the way Washington works, Mr. Perle suggested. 'He came ill-equipped for the job and has failed to master it,' he said. 'I do not meet the president, but from the people I meet who are close to him and from his speeches, I believe the gap between the president and his administration is without precedent.'"
   
   
2. Writing in the WSJ, Bernard Lewis argues the West has failed to realize the Islamists view of us is quite sophisticated:
   
   "We in the Western world see the defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union as a Western, more specifically an American, victory in the Cold War. For Osama bin Laden and his followers, it was a Muslim victory in a jihad, and, given the circumstances, this perception does not lack plausibility. From the writings and the speeches of Osama bin Laden and his colleagues, it is clear that they expected this second task, dealing with America, would be comparatively simple and easy. This perception was certainly encouraged and so it seemed, confirmed by the American response to a whole series of attacks."
   
   
3. With Justice John Roberts on the supreme court, the dynamic has changed:
   
   "This is a Supreme Court engaged in a fierce battle of ideas, a big-picture struggle over the role of the Court and the direction it’s going to take. When you talk about long-range influence over the law, it’s the ideas that define the Court. It’s a Court in struggle—not for the vote of one justice, but for an intellectual mooring. It's the Roberts Court v. the Stevens Court." (Via Patterico)
   
   
4. After signing a patent indemnification pact with Linux vendor Novell, many in the open source world expressed concern that Microsoft might be mounting an intellectual property claim against various Linux vendors. Those fears have begun to pan out after Fortune magazine printed claims from Microsoft that various high-profile open-source projects violate 235 of its software patents. Things have developed further as Microsoft said publicly it would not litigate on these alleged violations. That wasn't enough of an assurance for Linux creator Linus Torvalds who accused MS to put up or shut up as to which of the company's patents his software is violating. The whole situation is a further example of why software patents are a bad idea.
   
   
5. Democrats tried briefly to alter House rules and seriously limit minority Republicans' ability to debate and to submit amendments to bills. This attempt was thwarted, however. (Via Rob Bluey)
   

   
   

Democrats Deny They Backed Down on Iraq

The Washington Post made a big splash today with a story linked by almost everyone that said congressional Democrats had backed down on Iraq withdrawal timetable after their failure to override President Bush's veto which struck it down.

In a possible continuance of the congressional Dems' jostling with the Washington Post after their complaints against Post columnist David Broder, Democratic leaders are denying that they have caved to liberal blogger Joshua Marshall:

[T]he offices of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are denying a Washington Post story today saying that Congressional Democrats have backed down to the White House by offering to remove Iraq withdrawal language from the now-vetoed Iraq bill.

Pelosi just went before the Democratic caucus and informed them that the story's false, a Pelosi aide tells me. WaPo is standing by the story, and the lead writer of the Post piece, Jonathan Weisman, told me that leadership aides told him that the withdrawal language had to go. But the WaPo story goes further than that, saying explicitly that Dems have already "backed down" and offered the concession of removing the withdrawal language. Those aren't the same thing.

Why report that Dems have already caved in the negotiations if they haven't yet? [...]So what happened here? I just emailed Post reporter Weisman and requested comment. His answer:

That is very interesting, since I was told in no uncertain terms by one of her aides that the withdrawal dates had to go, since they could not stand by language Bush would never sign. That was cofirmed by another senior leadership aide and two members of the leadership.

I can say with no reluctance whatsoever that we stand by the story. By the way, nobody has contacted me about it. That should tell you a lot.

Congressional Dems are trying to save face it seems. Marshall continues:

I have no problem believing that these aides said this, or that the withdrawal language is likely to be taken out in the end. But the question remains: If this offer hasn't actually been made yet, why is WaPo saying it has been? It's one thing for the aides to be saying that the language will have to go; it's another to say even before the negotiations have started that the concession has already been offered to the White House. If what the Pelosi and Reid aides are telling me is true, isn't WaPo jumping the gun in saying Dems have already caved in advance of the negotiations?

This all gives rise to a bigger question: Why is much of the media's coverage of this focussed on the Democratic dilemma the veto creates, while so little of it is focussed on the fact that Republicans, too, are in a bind, are trapped between public opinion and their unyielding President, and are going to have to make concessions towards a compromise?

I'm surprised Marshall can't see it. He's usually quite a good analyst. Democrats are going to cave on this simply because their position is ipso facto worse than that of Republicans.

Comments like those made by Harry Reid about the war in Iraq being "lost" coupled with the surrender timetable being demanded by Dems are playing to all the worst stereotypes of Democrats being cut-and-run cowards when it comes to foreign policy.

The veto override failure was a sharp jolt back to reality for Reid, Pelosi, et al., making them realize that they will never get the votes to surrender so they moved accordingly. The Post somehow found out about it and printed it. After that leaked out, the leadership realized that they needed to save face with the extreme left, hence the quasi-denial to Marshall.

The New Isolationism

The DC Examiner makes a very worthwhile point in an editorial today:

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., currently the leading 2008 Democratic presidential candidate, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are making history this week by leading their party in Congress to the brink of endorsing a virulent New Isolationism. This New Isolationism imposes an impossible standard for deciding when America can legitimately use force overseas to protect its interests and establishes a cognitive dissonance as a benchmark for congressional oversight of foreign policy.

Clinton’s Senate speech on Wednesday mostly generated headlines about her warning to President Bush not to attack Iran without prior congressional approval. Given her name and status in the Democratic presidential sweepstakes, however, the more important graph from that speech was this one:

“We have all learned lessons from the conflict in Iraq, and we have to apply those lessons to any allegations that are being raised about Iran. What we are hearing has too familiar a ring. And we must be on guard that we never again make decisions on the basis of intelligence that turns out to be faulty.”

Because the prewar intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction has since been proven “wrong,” Clinton’s new standard is that the United States must not in the future act except on intelligence that can never be proven wrong after the fact. The reality is that 99.99 percent of the time, the best intelligence is incomplete and thus imperfect. Presidents rarely have intelligence so clear-cut as photos of Soviet missiles amid the palm trees during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Either Clinton misstated her view with these words or she intends, if elected president, to pull America into an isolationist shell.

I would add two things: 1) Clinton's husband certainly relied on "intelligence that turns out to be faulty" when he bombed a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory in 1998. 2) Each political party seems to retreat into isolationism when it does not have control of the White House. Republicans were the party of isolation during the Clinton years.